Gerhard Fiedler wrote:
>> the well-qualified candidate will get sick of trivial tests and form a
>> bad impression of your company.
>
> I thought of adding a short explanation to the top of the simple weed-out
> test.

There is one already. :)

>> If I receive a response to an application for a job, I expect to talk to
>> someone who knows what the job is about so "we" can come to a decision
>> on whether I'm suited for the job.  I don't expect a "battery" of tests
>> designed to see whether I was lying through my teeth on my resume!
>
> Of course you're right -- in an ideal world :)
>
> Reality may be different. If the market is so that for any such ad there
> are only a handful candidates, your expectation is realistic. If OTOH 
> there
> are often hundreds of candidates for an ad, your expectation is
> unrealistic, and if I were the hirer and you made your expectation clear 
> to
> me, that could disqualify you. If you don't understand the very real need
> of the hirer to weed out 150 candidates that can't answer a simple test
> that is way below the actual requirements and that should take you all of
> ten minutes to answer, so that he can spend his time more productively 
> with
> the 10 that pass it, you're likely not to understand the many more
> real-world compromises one has to make in a business.

It's not really about weeding out 150 candidates, in most cases 95% of the 
candidates are eliminated upfront based on their resume.

It's mostly about determining whether a particular candidate out of the 
remaining 5% actually has the basic qualifications for the job. 
Unfortunately, the resume is a rather poor indicator. Even though it may not 
be "lying", some people tend to embellish their resumes. Maybe their 
definition of "an expert in C" is very different from mine -- and I need to 
know what it is.

The test is not a prerequisite for the interview, in fact it's only given to 
those candidates who have already passed the resume sort and the phone 
screen. I found that most candidates don't mind taking the test, I have 
never had anyone flat out refuse to take one. And those that get somewhat 
indignant ("whaat?! there's a test?!"), are usually the ones that know the 
least.

The bottom line is, the test helps us make better hiring decisions, and it 
saves a lot of our and the candidate's time. If someone can't apply Ohm's 
law to a circuit, we're going to fire this person anyway -- why not weed 
them out upfront?

Vitaliy 

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